Every time I call my Uber/Ola driver I pray that they understand English or Hindi. And soon enough I realised the importance of local language. I was not alone, all of my fellows at UFP felt the same. And Vikrant came to our rescue.

Vikrant leads the Media and Design team and is responsible for design and development of the IIHS brand. The first class happened and we moved beyond, “Kannada Gotila” meaning – “I don’t know Kannada”. And now it is, “Kannada Kalita Ideeni” meaning – “I’m learning Kannada”.

Vikrant taught us some words of daily use and how to make sentences using those few words.
Kannada class is open to all departments in IIHS and it soon became the most famous class. We had some 9 classes so far, though I’ve been able to attend only 4 of them.

Sharing few photos from the first class.

Vikrant – the teacher

Sudeshna

Apoorva – the ganpati

Jayati – she’s cool like that

Geetika – She translated a sentence to Kannada, hence the happiness

Kapil, Aman & Sakhi – understanding or trying to understand, perhaps.

Gautam too attends this class. Can you believe this. I still can’t.

Chandni – we don’t see her much around until its kannada class.

Her name is Kavina and she’s not a poet.

Simran is a diligent student of this class.

Arshiya being her here.

Haifa attends every class with her phone in her hand. God knows what does she do there.

Shriya entered the classroom right when Vikrant ended the session. Honestly, this is one of my favourite photo from IIHS. Gautam and Shriya ❤

Pushkal – yes, he smiles too people.

Anushya is a photographer and she doesn’t like me much because of my habit of taking her photos. Well, that’s how photographers are, no?

Its been two weeks and I couldn’t share much other than posting few photos on facebook or twitter.

We were introduced to practica. All we knew about practica was this, “Practica are term-length, site-based, applied learning courses. They draw on real-life cases and working problems that are situated in the city. Fellows will be provided with a problem situation (together with extensive written and audio-visual information) regarding a city or a particular site in Bangalore. Working in teams as well as individually, the Practica will help Fellows apply principles of integrating theory, practice and link skills and concepts learnt in the classroom to develop solutions. In doing so, they will develop problem-solving skills as well as capacity to create innovative & sustainable solutions that will help them translate knowledge into application and then impact, in the Indian context. The Practica will also allow participants to interact with and be evaluated by critical stakeholders in the city – like government officials, entrepreneurs and civil society organizations”.
Source: UFP website

This is what we’ve read on the urban fellowship programme website. We were told about our sites in Bangalore. 10 teams were formed of 3 fellows each. We proceeded to our sites – Sultanpalya & Malleswaram. 5 teams were to work in Sultanpalya and 5 teams in Malleswaram. What we did and what we were suppose to do, I’ll write about that next time, probably.

Sharing some of the photos from Malleswaram. The team I was part of was suppose to work in Malleswaram.

This is the first time when I’m writing a blog, without photos or videos. It’s not that I choose to write this. But I’ve been asked to write this post as a part of our assignment. Rekha Raghunathan who moderates a compulsory skill lab on “Writing in & for Urban” is making me and other 29 fellows write such blog posts.

I’m late by few hours already and I missed today’s class as well. We were suppose to submit this today before 11:59 am, technically. Rekha extended the timeline for people like me who don’t write much about anything. And I’m still struggling writing this blog post.

The original idea was to write about anything we have not written about. So happens to be, that I have not written about anything at all. My initial thoughts were that I will write about “Religion and Sexuality”. Then I thought, I’ll write about “Religion and Politics”. I see none of these happening here.

So I chose to write about this. This – the blog post without photos. I don’t realize when photos became an integral part of my life. People around me have accepted my camera as an extension of my body. They don’t bother if I click pictures in classroom during lecture or while eating food. Rather, I’ve been asked at times if everything is fine with me, on seeing me without camera.

I wonder, how is it affecting my identity as an individual. It’s difficult for me to recall those events which I haven’t photographed. I tend to forget people I’ve not photographed. Talking of my childhood, the only memories I have are those which I see in pictures, clicked by my father. He has documented my childhood extensively. So many memories yet so little that I remember.

I’m deprived of words, yet again. I really don’t know what else to write. Oh! I’m listening to Coke Studio, Season 9. Mohsin Abbas Haidar sang Uddi Ja in 4th episode which came out last week. In my opinion, this particular episode is one of the best produced episodes’ of Coke Studio 9 so far. All four songs are different from each other yet I feel connected to all of them while listening to them back to back. Somehow they compliment each other. I’ll write about it some other day, perhaps.

I kept looking at the word count while writing this post. Rekha has asked to write 400 words. I crossed 400 at the end of last sentence and I feel happy within that I’ve been able to write this much. I will probably take some time to edit it and then publish it.

You know it’s nice to write at times, I think. But I would love to have some photos as well.

As a part of our Practica we will be working in our neighbourhood. This short film is from the first visit that we had last week. There are two sites in the neighbourhood on which we are suppose to work. This film is from Malleswaram, Bangalore.

Malleswaram is a north-western neighbourhood in Bangalore city. It was developed as a planned suburb after the great plague of 1898, which caused many people to move out of the city center. It derives its name from the Kaadu Malleshwara temple.

We have moved to our designated classroom now. And before you start making assumptions on how our classroom might look like, please hold yourself. No, its not the usual classroom you come across in every second college or university or institute. This classroom has redefined my understanding of how classrooms should look and work in real world.

The week was exhausting but overwhelming. I had found the peace within for the fact the work ethics at IIHS are on the same lines I’ve been wanting to be build or associated with. So came the weekend.

Bengaluru Poetry Festival was scheduled on August 6-7th, 2016 and I was looking forward to the weekend. One Vikramjeet Singh Rooprai, Founder – Youth for Heritage Foundation was coming to Bangalore and it had been time since we met last time and got lost in our conversation which ranges from history to philosophy to politics to everything we can put our heads on. Second, it was the first weekend in Bangalore after Urban Fellowship has commenced.

I slept like a hog on Saturday the 6th of August and planned day out on Sunday. Daksh, my junior from CSPA is interning in Bangalore and I had been wanting to see him too. So the first half of day was spent at Poetry festival at Leela Palace Hotel, Bangalore listening to Piyush Mishra – singing and reciting poetry; chatting with Vikramjeet Singh Rooprai and second half of the day was spent at NGMA, Bangalore – where I’ve been wanting to go since last year. I’ve been to NGMA New Delhi & Mumbai and was fascinated how the art work is curated at both of these galleries.

I ended up video documenting Piyush Mishra’s singing and poetry recitals – which I’ll share over the course of time. I’ve shared one video on Facebook already which can be viewed here:Piyush Mishra sings O Ri Duniya(Live)